Word: bonine
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...major's confession of cannibalism. Unlike rumored instances elsewhere, this was no story of starving Japanese eating their own or enemy dead in an effort to survive. It was ritual cannibalism practiced on the bodies of U.S. flyers who had been decapitated after being shot down in the Bonin Islands. The sole excuse: "war madness...
...three island chains which constitute steppingstones to Japan (see map), the Ryukyu line is the most inviting. Iwo, already serving as an advanced base for fighter bombers, is too small; the rocky Bonin and Izu Islands, which would be defended as savagely as Iwo, are also too small. The Kurils, extending northeast toward Russian Kamchatka, are not much larger, and are blanketed by weather almost as foul as that in the Aleutians...
...Superfortress route between Saipan and Tokyo were hornets' nests of Jap fighters and bombers: a surface task force of the U.S. Pacific Fleet steamed in and battered these airfields and harbor facilities in the Bonin Islands with big guns. The Third Fleet's carrier planes hammered Okinawa and Formosa...
Lieut. General George C. Kenney's Far Eastern Air Force had stepped up its bombing of air bases and oil supplies in Celebes and Borneo; Major General Willis H. Hale's Seventh Air Force had smashed at the Bonin and Volcano Islands; Chennault had raided Formosa; the southern Palau Islands had been seized by U.S. troops...
...other planes. Wherever the Hellcats have roved in the skies above the Pacific, they have conquered. At Guam, Ensign W. B. ("Spider") Webb nosed his Hellcat into a cluster of Jap dive bombers, joined them in their landing circle, leisurely shot down six. In the first attack on the Bonin Islands in June, Lieut. L. G. ("Barney") Barnard shot down two Jap planes in 25 seconds, sent three more spinning out of the air within 25 minutes...